South Lanarkshire Council and partners have invested in communities to bring benefit to locals.
The South Lanarkshire Community Planning Partnership has been involved in neighbourhood planning for Springhall and Whitlawburn, in Rutherglen and Camuslang,.
It has involved residents in a bid to increase community engagement and improve the area.
Neighbourhood planning has been led by local people in the area since 2017, and it aims to create lasting improvements through community led decision making.
Focus has been placed on these areas as they appear in the top five per cent of deprived datazones in Scotland according to the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation.
A range of work has been done by the partnership and locals since 2017, including launching surveys to find out key resident priorities. From this, ten key themes were identified and £20,000 was secured from the Lottery in 2018 which was matched by South Lanarkshire Council to deliver priorities.
A participatory budgeting process was also launched in 2018 to allocate funds, with 378 residents engaging which led to the delivery of eight new projects.
In the past year, a further £8400 has been made available for participatory budgeting which has funded groups in the area.
Progress has been achieved over the past five years with the priorities identified through the survey.
More leisure and social opportunities were delivered as £8400 of participatory budgeting funds were invested in reconnecting individuals and the wider community – including a family fun event, group outings, youth focused programmes and outdoor play for younger children.
A youth development team volunteer for Springhall and Whitlawburn praised the participatory budgeting process, saying: “The participatory budgeting is really great as local people get to have a real say in what the money should be spent on. Getting our funding helped us make sure we could do the things the young people were asking for.”
Improvements were made in housing as 160 new homes have been delivered by the council and 60 further homes being developed, 10 in partnership with Whitlawburn Housing Co-Operative.
There have been improvements in health as 385 people are engaged in physical activity through exercise sessions, health walks and cycling.
Progress has been made in the physical environment of the area as South Lanarkshire Council’s grounds team has provided ‘The Cage; which is a storage container that will be developed into a conventional storage space and meeting place with the Lottery fund agreeing to invest a further £57,000 to develop activities on this site.
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